Balvenie Tun 1401 Deconstruction

Posted on Monday, Sep 2, 2013 at 07:43 PM

Balvenie has been killing it lately with their "Tun 1401" releases. These are special (and delicious) combinations of casks dating as far back as the 1960s, vatted together in the aforementioned tun. If you've missed out, well… you've missed out!

If you're a fan of any of the Tun 1401 bottlings, you can't help but wonder, "What does each individual cask in here taste like?" Why "waste" them in a vatting like this?

To answer that question, LAWS sat down with Balvenie ambassador Lorne Cousin -- and cask samples of six constituent single malts in Balvenie Tun 1401 Batch 6. Tasting notes and ratings on each cask would be somewhat pointless, since you can't go out and buy them anyway (or even really taste them), but here's the scoop:

The whole is better than the sum of its parts. It really is, and there was unanimous agreement on that.

All of the single casks were interesting -- some were really fantastic -- while an under-proof one was pretty hard to love -- but none were as purely enjoyable as the vatted result. It really goes to show just how impressive David Stewart's skills are (Balvenie's master blender). We were thoroughly impressed.

What a great meeting! Great whiskeys and a great education. Thanks Lorne!